“Side quests are almost my reason for doing videogames in the first place.” That’s not a marketing line — it’s a direct quote from James Wragg, lead developer at Lovely Hellplace, the studio behind one of early access gaming’s most talked-about RPGs right now.
Wragg made the admission in a recent interview, explaining why Entropy — the studio’s follow-up to the acclaimed Dread Delusion — keeps accumulating words at a rate he never originally planned for.
The Game That Was Supposed to Be Shorter
Entropy arrived in early access on 18 August and immediately drew comparisons to classic PlayStation-era JRPGs. Set in a dark fantasy world where gods have abandoned their people, it casts players as a theatre troupe member thrust into an espionage mission after a demonic invasion tears everything apart. Tactical turn-based combat, a striking low-poly aesthetic, and a world built on layered moral choices — it’s already earning strong reviews from RPG fans.
But Wragg will admit the scope ballooned beyond his original plans. “I started off Entropy with the idea that we were going to write way fewer words,” he said. “I was like, ‘Dread Delusion is like the length of a novel. This is crazy. This took so much work.’ So for Entropy, I really wanted to cut the word count down loads. We were going to trim the fat.”
That resolution lasted until the writers actually started writing.
Key point: Entropy entered early access on 18 August 2026 with the full first act available — two towns, three dungeons, and a wealth of side content from developer Lovely Hellplace.
Why Sidequests Are Where RPGs Come Alive
For Wragg, the sprawl isn’t a flaw — it’s the point. He traces the studio’s obsession with side content directly back to his love of The Elder Scrolls, where the habit of ignoring the main quest entirely in favour of whatever wandering threw up was practically the whole game.
“A big inspiration for Dread Delusion was playing Elder Scrolls games almost wilfully ignoring the main quest, and getting lost in all the side content,” Wragg explained. He finds that RPGs reveal their richest writing in their optional stories, because side quests are “allowed to be strange” in ways that main plots rarely can afford to be.
Dread Delusion proved the point. Its optional questlines included an ethical dilemma involving vegetarian zombies and a Blade Runner 2049-inspired investigation into a person erased from history — and their loved ones’ memories. These weren’t filler. They were the reason players kept talking about the game long after they’d finished it.
A Writing Room Built on Collaboration
Wragg estimates he wrote around a third of Entropy‘s content himself, with the rest handed off to other writers who build on his outlines and broad story directions. He’s effusive about the results. Writer Harry Tuffs, for instance, took Wragg’s rough concept of “vegetarian vampires” in Dread Delusion and turned it into something far better than the original idea. “I gave this to Harry, and he made it way better than my dumb original ideas,” Wragg said.
Returning writer Io Brindle is also back for Entropy, having led the investigative questline in Dread Delusion that stuck with so many players. The collaborative model means the game keeps expanding because everyone on the team genuinely enjoys getting deep into character backstory and theme — not just building combat encounters.
“We love making weird and wonderful stories, and we love deep characters who we can get into chats with and find out all their beliefs and backstories and stuff,” Wragg said. That enthusiasm, he concedes, is probably why the word count is what it is.
What’s Already in Early Access
The current early access build covers Entropy‘s full first act — roughly a quarter of the planned final game. That includes the starting town of Draenog, the city of Cuvas, three dungeons, and dozens of recruitable mercenaries, each with distinct aptitudes, drawbacks, and stories. The injury system adds another layer: characters who take too many hits in a fight can lose limbs permanently, forcing tactical reshuffles that ripple through the rest of the campaign.
The plan is around a year in early access, with two further acts arriving in updates. Given how much the first act already delivers, Wragg’s insistence on chasing every interesting sidequest tangent looks less like scope creep and more like knowing exactly what makes a great RPG.
